


Be Careful What You Wish For

by micehell



Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: Angst, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-24
Updated: 2004-02-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 22:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/micehell/pseuds/micehell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brian wishes he had never been born and someone wants to help him with that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Careful What You Wish For

He loved uppers, the euphoria. He loved downers, the mellowness. He loved alcohol, the haziness. But together, they made a toxic brew.

So he spent the latter part of the evening in the church of white tiles praying at the porcelain pew. And with all the fervency of the newly converted, he prayed, "I wish I'd never been born." And though the god that reigned there had heard that prayer many times before, this time it decided to answer.

:::::::::::::::

Brian woke up wondering where he was. It was a vague sort of wondering, because his brain really wasn't up to more than that at the moment. Eventually, several of his senses returned and he could see well enough to tell he was in his own room. Alone.

Something about being alone was bothering him, but it took several more minutes before he could figure it out. There was no way, considering the condition he'd been in last night, that he'd gotten here under his own power. Someone had to have brought him home, probably Curt. But Curt usually stayed with him until he woke up, so Brian wondered where he was. Not that he would have been able to do anything with, or even to, Curt should he have been there, but it was still nice to cuddle when he felt like this.

Hearing footsteps approaching, he put on his best pout to make sure that Curt felt guilty about leaving him alone. The pout turned to a full-out gape when Cecil walked into the bedroom.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Cecil smiled that passive-aggressive little smirk at him. "I've come in answer to your prayer."

"I'm pretty sure I would remember if I'd been praying for my has-been former manager."

"Charming as ever, I see. Still, I am here in answer to your prayer, the one you made last night when you were trying to introduce your intestines to your new best friend, the toilet bowl."

"And what prayer was that? Please will some twit trespass in my house while I'm trying to recover from a hangover?"

"No, you wished that you had never been born."

"So you've come to kill me to grant me that wish?"

"That wouldn't fulfill the terms of your wish, tempting though it might be. No, I've been designated by a certain god to show you what life would be like for those around you if you had never been born. Afterwards, should you still wish it, it will be arranged."

"Wow, I don't even know where to start with that. You're working for a god? Huh. And I'd thought I'd heard everything."

"Well, it wasn't like people were beating down my door with offers after you stabbed me in the back."

"Right, well, ignoring the issue of your mental health, let's save us all some effort. Whatever I might or might not have said last night, I don't now wish that I had never been born, so you can just leave. In fact, I insist on it."

"You're in no position to insist on anything at all. You're alone here and no one will come if you call. As to my sanity, save your judgment until after you see what I have to show you."

"Uh, Cecil, I've seen that before and it's hardly likely to influence my opinion in a positive way."

"You really are a bastard, but I have a job to do, so just sit back and shut up. Now what's going to happen here is that I'm going to tell you 3 stories. These stories are about people that have been close to you in your life. The first part of each story is how their life goes in a world where you exist; the second part is where you don't. I only need to do these 3 because pretty much everyone else's life isn't significantly changed regardless of whether you're here or not. Turns out Jerry's prone to stupid publicity stunts regardless of who he manages."

Brian had had just about enough of this whack-job. Leaning over, he buzzed the intercom for someone to get the crazy little bastard out of here. Except no one answered. Everyone must be feeling the effects from last night's party. He'd just have to get up and either find someone or else find somewhere else to be until Cecil left.

Except that as soon as he tried to leave the bed, Cecil pointed at him. This, in and of itself, meant nothing, but Brian suddenly felt like he weighed a ton. He couldn't even lift his head, not alone leave the room.

Cecil's smirk grew broader. "No, I don't think so. I told you that you were alone here. And I really don't feel like having to chase you down, so I want you to just stay there until I'm finished. Right?"

Brian couldn't even get up enough strength to curse him. Cecil seemed inclined to take that as agreement.

"Well then, on to our first story, which happens to be about yours truly. The sob story comes first. After you dumped me for the ever so slick Jerry, my professional life sunk into, well, the toilet. And there's nothing quite so pathetic as an aging, broke queen, so my personal life followed suit. This continued until I wound up in a hospital where I died a lonely , not very old man."

Brian was able to roll his eyes over the melodrama. This earned him a glare from the other man.

"Fine. Now life without you is a very different story. Just like I did with you, I saw a struggling artist playing in a bar. His name was Freddy and, though he wasn't in your league for looks, he was a very talented pianist and singer. We enjoyed moderate success professionally, enough to live a comfortable life, and personally we both met each other's needs. We lived quite happily together for many years until I wound up in the hospital. Not everything changed just because we didn't meet. However, in this alternate existence, when I die, I don't do it alone. I'm surrounded by those who care for me."

Brian was struggling to say something, but the best he could do was grunt.

Looking at him, Cecil finally relented. "OK, I'm going to let you up, but if you try to leave, I'm just going to put you back down again."

Grateful to be able to move, Brian didn't immediately attack the man, though he was sorely tempted. However, until he figured out how Cecil was doing whatever it was he was doing, he felt it was a better bet just to hear him out. That didn't mean that he had to put up with this crap without complaining though. "You were alone when we met. I can hardly be held responsible for the fact that you're not a particularly likeable man."

If looks could kill, then Cecil would definitely have gotten his wish about Brian's death. After a couple of minutes of this, he finally nodded. "Granted. You're not entirely responsible for my bad life. However, even you can't deny that the alternate one is much better."

"I don't even believe there is an alternate one, so I don't have to admit anything."

"I can only tell you the truth. It's up to you to believe it."

"Very deep."

"Please, let me finish so I can leave and not have to put up with you anymore. Our second story involves your wife. I trust you remember Mandy, though it has been a long time since you've seen her, hasn't it?"

"We have an open marriage, which is what she wants as much as I do."

"Of course, because every woman wants to be ignored while here husband is off playing with others. But that's neither here nor there. Her life with you will eventually lead to estrangement and divorce. From there, she'll move from useless man to useless man until she winds up alone back in the States, barely scraping by as a lounge singer. Not that she'll be bitter, no. Oh, well, perhaps just a little."

"And I suppose I'm to blame because she doesn't have enough talent to support herself?"

"It's funny that you should mention talent, because in the alternate existence, that's something she displays a lot of. In that world, she stays with Jack, eventually collaborating with him on an album. She then does several solo albums, which are very successful. She parlays that success into a producer's gig, becoming one of the most powerful women in the industry."

"You didn't mention any men in that life."

"No, she doesn't ever marry."

"See, so she's not better off without me."

"Oh, yes, I can see where success and personal fulfillment are no where near as wonderful as a bad marriage. Forgive me for mentioning her then."

Brian rolled his eyes again. "Just tell me the last story and get out."

"Our last contestant is Curt. The love of your life. In his life with you, he winds up arguing with you after you side with Jerry over him. During the argument, he loses his temper enough to hurt you and then feels compelled to leave. He flees to Berlin, where he winds up working with Jack Fairy, but it's not enough and his career winds up in a black hole. He returns to the States, where he lives a marginal existence, and even that is threatened by you in your bid for fame and fortune. Because in the end, everyone is expendable as long as you get what you want."

"And that's your unbiased opinion, is it?"

"No, that's my very biased opinion, but it doesn't make it any less true. But on to the last part of the story. Without you, Curt stays in the States where he is instrumental in founding a new type of rock known as punk. He enjoys some success with this, enough to allow him to work with new artists, doing some mentoring and production work to help them out. This work allows him enough self-esteem that he no longer feels that he has to sleep with anything that has a pulse just because they ask him. And because I know this matters to you, he spends a lot of time alone until he meets a young reporter who was interviewing him for a retrospective piece. They get together and live happily ever after. The end."

"Right, because we all know how stable Curt is, so of course we'll believe that story."

"You don't believe me?"

"You could say that."

"Brian, Brian."

Brian rolled his eyes yet once again. Cecil brought that out in him. "Cecil, Cecil. I really want to know what you've been smoking to come up with this preposterous story."

"You think I'm delusional? What about my keeping you still with a gesture."

"After everything I took in last night, it's lucky I'm still breathing, not alone moving. It's just left over junk."

"Again, I can only tell you, I can't make you believe. Basically it comes down to this: either I'm telling you a lie or I'm telling you the truth. If it's the first, it doesn't matter what you choose, because this is all just a delusion on my part, so you can choose to give those around you a better life without consequence to yourself. If it's the second, then you can choose to give those around you a better life because it's the right thing to do. Same thing either way, right?"

"Oh, right."

"Then choose."

"Right, I choose like you said and then, in your delusional state, you kill me to make it come true. No thanks."

"Frankly, if I wanted to kill you, it wouldn't matter what you choose, I'd just do it. Making up this story just to then kill you doesn't make any sense."

"Neither do you."

"Brian, I'm not going to kill you, my word on it. And regardless of what else you might believe about me, I never lied to you."

Though it galled him to do so, Brian had to admit that that was true. "OK, that might be true. But even if this whole thing isn't just some flashback to a bad acid trip, hell, especially if it isn't, I'm not going to choose to have never been born. If what you said is true, then I'll see it happening as it goes on and I'll be able to stop it. I may not be able to save you, but I'll take care of Mandy and Curt."

"Yes, you would think that you'd do that. Mind you, no one else who knows you would believe it, but I'm sure you do. So that's your choice then, you're going to go on?"

"Yeah, I'm going to go on. And you're going to leave."

"You really are a selfish bastard, but as you wish. I've done my part."

Brian watched him leave the room. Satisfied that the crazy man was gone, he decided to go yell at his security people for letting him in in the first place, but before he could do that he fell asleep.

::::::::::

When he awoke, Brian was once again lying in his bed, but this time Curt was with him. Looking at the beautiful face of his companion, Brian worried for a moment about what Cecil had told him. Then he snorted at getting that upset over a dream. His snort woke Curt up.

"Hmm. You feel OK?"

"I feel just fine, why?"

"You were pretty sick last night after all the shit you took."

"That was last night?"

"Wow, you must have really been wasted if you can't even remember when it was."

"No, it's just that I had a really strange dream and it felt like it went on a long time. Just messed with my sense of time."

"What was the dream about?"

"Cecil came to me and told me that I'd wished that I had never been born and that he was going to help me achieve that."

"Actually, you kept saying that a lot last night. You'd gag for awhile and then moan that out and then do it all again. It was almost funny."

"Yeah, well the dream was kind of funny, too, except that it was very irritating, also. Cecil kept saying everyone would be better off if I had never been born and he told me all these stories about him, and Mandy and you to illustrate it. He told me you were the founder of a new rock movement, even."

"Cool. I've always wanted to do that."

"Yeah, and he told me that Mandy wound up as one of the Powers That Be in the record industry."

"Wow, no wonder you found the dream irritating."

"Yeah, it was kind of eerie, too. I think I'd just like to forget about it."

"It's OK by me. I mean, how could my life be better when I have you."

After saying that, Curt went to sleep. Brian was afraid to.

fin  



End file.
